Leahy remembers Kennedy as a close friend and gifted legislator

(Host) A
lot of Vermonters have been sharing their thoughts today about the death of
Senator Edward Kennedy.

As VPR's Bob Kinzel reports, Senator Patrick
Leahy remembers Kennedy as a close friend, a tireless worker, and a gifted
legislator.

(Kinzel) Over
the past 3 and half decades, Leahy and Kennedy served together on many
committees and their offices were very close to each other.

Leahy
says he would often walk to the Senate chamber with Kennedy whenever bells rang
to announce an upcoming roll call vote.

They
traveled together overseas on a number of occasions and Leahy says he came to
realize that Kennedy was a very special person:

(Leahy) "Ted believed in America, he believed in
the promise in each of us, he believed in the necessity for health care, in
education, he led on every one of those issues...I can say this of only a few I
ever served with but he was ‘a senator's senator' and it's a sad day."

(Kinzel)
Leahy says Kennedy had the rare gift of being able to bring different sides
together. He says Kennedy often took feuding senators up to his Capital office
for an informal chat:

(Leahy) "They'd sit and talk and every so often
somebody would start oh we can't do that and he would kind of laugh put his arm
around their shoulder whoever it was, oh come on now save that for your
supporters back home you're talking to me now let's see what we can do."

(Kinzel)
When Leahy arrived in Washington in January of 1975 as a freshman senator, he said
Kennedy gave him some advice:

(Leahy) "Stand up for what you believe in people
will either accept it or they don't but what's the use to being in the Senate
if you can't say what you believe it?

(Kinzel) During
the past year while battling cancer, Kennedy spent very little time in the
Senate. Leahy says he'll never forget the first time Kennedy returned to the
floor for a key vote:

(Leahy) "The whole Senate rose and was
applauding - Republicans and Democrats alike. The whole gallery rose, everybody
in the gallery was applauding and cheering and clapping. Now technically under
the Senate rules... the presiding officer is supposed to bang the gavel and say
no demonstrations are allowed in the Senate chamber but of course the presiding
officer was standing and cheering."

(Kinzel)
With Kennedy's death, Leahy is now the third most senior member of the U.S.
Senate:

(Leahy) "I would have been happy to have spent
the rest of my career being number 4 and had him ahead of me. I fully expected
that Ted and I end our careers together in the Senate."